7 books for the first acquaintance with psychology. Choice of Lev Khegai

Our experts have compiled the lists to their taste so that they include books on self-development, on child and family psychology, telling about the difficulties that we face on a daily basis.

1. “Memories, dreams, reflections.” Carl Gustav Jung

The biographical book is a living history of Jung’s personal and scientific searches, in which everyone will find something close. The 80-year-old master of psychoanalysis dictated it to his student and like-minded Aniela Yaffa, gradually plunging into the atmosphere of inner life, into the experiences of childhood and adolescence, analyzing his dreams and events of external life.

I would not advise reading numerous “instructions” on this subject for the purpose of self-knowledge, because there are so many personalities, so many ways. A sincere autobiography of the search for a real person will yield more than any authoritative teaching. (Harvest, 2003)

2. “We. The Psychology of Romantic Love. Robert Johnson

American Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson offers to look not only at the charms and possibilities of romantic love, but also at the contradictions and illusions that we have on an unconscious level.

In particular, he touches on a fundamental question that covers all the problems of relationships in a couple: how to combine the inner spiritual romantic needs behind falling in love with the non-ideal partner – a real person.

Robert Johnson explores the nature of love in the myth of Tristan and Iseult, the first legend in Western literature to describe romantic love. The book shows the origins of romantic illusions and the authenticity of mature love. (Cogito Center, 2009)

3. “Little children and their mothers.” Donald Woods Winnicott

Usually psychoanalysts write in complex language and address their books to professionals. But here are lectures by child psychologist Winnicott on the relationship between mother and newborn child, which are intended for a general audience. The author moves from psychology to pediatrics and pedagogy.

The book will help women think about what it means to be a “bad” and “good enough” mother, and in what cases it is possible to become “too good”. Although some of Winnicott’s sayings seem outdated today, the personality of the author is important here. According to the book, one can trace how the thinking of a psychoanalyst works. (Class, 2016)

4. “Lucifer effect”. Philip Zimbardo

A social psychologist talks about the famous “prison experiment” in 1971, during which Stanford students, divided into “jailers” and “prisoners”, reproduced the worst examples of relations in prisons in just a few days and discovered qualities in themselves that they did not know about and would rather never find out.

Now, 45 years later, Philip Zimbardo is moving from a specific case to the most sweeping generalizations. He reflects on how a vicious social system, with its coercion and violence, encourages us to commit vicious acts. And is the individual capable of resisting this pressure? (Alpina non-fiction, 2016)

5. “Pass in the middle of the way.” James Hollis

This is a book about age crises, combining existential sadness with Jungian optimism. And above all, it is about the midlife crisis, one of the main topics of analytical psychology.

James Hollis argues that a tipping point is inevitable in everyone’s life, although it may not be related to physical middle age. And our sense of self in the second half of life largely depends on how we will be able to use the unique opportunity given to us to revise the established idea of ​​ourselves, “wake up” and acquire a new identity. (Cogito Center, 2008)

6. “Tomorrow I was always a lion.” Arnhild Lauveng

Norwegian Arnhild Lauveng has been diagnosed with schizophrenia for most of his life. The illness did not prevent her from becoming a practicing clinical psychologist and, already in stable remission, writing a book about herself. Arnhild describes in detail his experiences – the feelings of a seriously ill person, analyzing them from the perspective of a professional psychologist. Calmly and slightly detached, he talks about the actions of doctors, explaining their mistakes and misconceptions, but at the same time he does not lose touch in his soul with the very patient who was tied with belts and who so needed support and understanding.

Arnhild Lauweng’s confessional book will help the reader understand what mental illness is. Perhaps for many it will be a discovery that mental illness is not fatal and irreversible, and that a person struggling for meaning lives inside the patient. (Bahrakh-M, 2015)

7. Whiplash: Sects, Literature, and Revolution. Alexander Etkind

In my opinion, this is one of the best books about the psychology of modern Russia — the author shows how the philosophical search of the Silver Age, modernism in art and communism in politics grew out of the religious sectarianism of the XNUMXth century, giving rise to all the tragic processes of the XNUMXth century.

The current situation of so-called post-postmodernism, by which we designate a hellish mixture of heterogeneous fermentations in the minds and hearts of contemporaries, can only be understood by taking into account the historical continuity of the ongoing processes. It is worth looking back to confidently look forward. (UFO, 2013)